


Laying Hands

by AshenPhoenix



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Belonging, Finding a home, Friendship, Gen, Homelessness, Mild Abuse, Mutants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshenPhoenix/pseuds/AshenPhoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moira Kerr is an obscure, C-class healer: power to help, but too much limitation to make a true difference. This story traces her life through homelessness, Xavier's Institute, SHIELD, and finally, to the attention of the Avengers. Shackled by the restrictions written in her DNA, she calls herself weak. She'll always be weak. Destiny begs to differ... (Xmen crossover at first) (I'm Kepouros on FF)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> In this story for the long haul, you guys! I can't wait to really stretch my legs in this ginormous universe that is the Avengers and X-Men world. Granted, there will me considerably more of the former than the latter, but hey, I have to start somewhere. :) So enjoy a thorough story written with care and nerdy awe.

"Little girl! Little girl, can you hear me?!"

I blink up at the man in the coveralls. He looks scared. I wonder why.

"Just don't move, don't move! Ohmygod SOMEBODY CALL 911!"

He dashes off, leaving me under the dumpster. As the sleep clears from my eyes and mind, I look down at my stomach, feeling a pressure. Oh. The dumpster is on my stomach. How did that happen? Ouch, that hurts!

As the repetitive beep beep beep of the trash truck's backup signal echoes through the brick alley, I try to piece together what happened. I'd fallen asleep behind the McDonald's dumpster, like usual, after eating my fill of cold fries and apple pies out of it. Did I mistake the day for garbage pickup? I must have, because this man in coveralls and his loud truck should not be here.

When he hefted the dumpster's contents into his truck's cavernous maw, I must have turned in my sleep. When he set the heavy metal box down, it was on top of me. I'm almost positive he didn't mean to do it.

The two metal prongs from the truck's lifter thread the channels under the dumpster, and with a mechanical jerk, the dumpster lifts off me.

Tears spring to my eyes as my fractured bones grind. There's wetness across my belly from where the metal bit deep. The tears don't have time to fall before the grinding stops, and the pain goes away.

"Little girl! Stay right there, don't move!" the coveralls man appears next to me again, dialing on his phone. "I need an ambulance, please, hurry..."

I sit up and scoot backwards, out from under the hovering dumpster. Glancing around the crouched man, I wonder if I can run around him before he catches me. Oh, but I'm so tired... I want to sleep some more.

A white box with bright flashing red lights and a screeching siren comes to the end of the alley. The coveralls man is still talking to me, and holding my hand, for some reason. I'm too tired to fight it. "How are you sitting up?" he babbles. His hand is shaking in mine. "You shouldn't be alive, you shouldn't be moving..."

A man and a woman in black pants with lots of pockets run over from the white box, carrying heavy bags and a thin tank on wheels. They shove the coveralls man aside and run gloved hands all over my body, asking me stupid questions.

When they can't find anything wrong, they guide me to sit on the rough metal step at the back of the white box. They put a mask with holes to my face, and it hisses tasteless air from the thin tank on wheels. They seem at a loss to do anything more. Through the plastic mask that fogs with my breath, I eye the crowd that has gathered around the alley entrance suspiciously. I don't like people, much less people watching me. But I can't summon the strength to snarl.

"She's covered in blood! I saw the dumpster fall on her!" the coveralls man is babbling confusedly to the black-pants man and a police officer ten feet away.

"Well, she's not got a scratch on her," the black pants man declares, glancing over his shoulder at me. "The blood's clearly fresh enough to be hers. I just don't understand it."

I swing my dirty bare feet off the back off the white box, waiting for my energy to come back so I can run away.

The woman in black pants comes around the corner of the white box, and she startles me. I hate that she saw me flinch, but she only looks at me with soft eyes, her hands upraised. My eyes land on the candy bar in one of them, and go wide.

"Here, you look hungry," she says gently, putting the bar on the rough step next to me. Her hand has scarcely left it before I'm snatching it up, ripping the mask off my face and the wrapper from the food. I inhale the sweet, chewy bar with barely a chew.

She is watching me carefully. "What's your name, little girl?"

I swallow the last bite of the candy and lick the wrapper, wishing there was more. It helps, though. I feel my energy slowly coming back.

"Do you know your name?" asks the woman in black pants again.

It seems important. I should know my name. Doesn't everyone have a name? Even as I consider, the words whisper up into my head, from somewhere deep in my mind.

"Moira Kerr," I reply, finally. My voice sounds strangely young, but I'm proud that it doesn't shake.

With a friendly smile, she reaches up to tuck a strand of dirty, lank blonde hair behind my ear. "Nice to meet you, Moira."

 

I pick up some words over the next few days: Social Services. Foster homes. Foster families.

Over time, they all come to mean something.

One of my foster families has six other children that Mama - she makes us call her that - didn't give birth to. We children play on the dirt lot surrounding the long, skinny metal house that we all live in. I think it's called a mobile home, but it never goes anywhere.

I don't talk as much as the other six children. They tease me for it, and it makes me angry.

"Slow poke, bad joke! Slow poke, bad joke!" they chant, running in circles around me and dodging my tiny fists.

"Stop it!" I yell. They ignore me, so I leap at the biggest boy and push him to the dusty ground. My fists land on his mouth and nose, and soon he's bleeding. Why isn't he punching me back?

When the chanting stops, I can think again. The boy under me isn't hitting me back, and that makes me pause, feeling strangely guilty. He's crying and holding his injured face.

I feel bad for hitting him, now. Really bad. My fists fall loose. "Don't cry," I say. If he keeps crying, I might cry. I feel the tears threatening to spill. "Let me fix it," I beg, prying his hand off his face.

When I touch his mouth, smearing the bright red blood, the bust in his lip seals up. His nose stops leaking red. When I pull my hands back, he's looking up at me with both fear and... thanks?

"Moira!" roars Mama, stomping up behind me. She jerks me off the boy by the upper arm, swinging me around. "What are you doing?!"

"Helping him!" I roar back, clawing at her too-tight grip.

Mama smacks my backside hard a few times, but I don't understand why. I hurt the boy, but I fixed him. "But I fixed him!" I shout, struggling. "I fixed him!"

When it's discovered that the boy is no longer bleeding, the other children, Mama, and my foster father (who makes us call him Papa) all look at me strangely. Mama and Papa yell most of the night, and in the morning, Mama makes a phone call while Papa smokes on the front step.

The next day, I'm driven to a new foster family. This one has a real house, a dog named Max, and only three children. I'm the only foster child, and the other three children don't like me because of it. They're all bigger than me, and they pull my hair when Mom and Dad aren't looking.

The dog gets hit by a car on our street. The car keeps going. I see it happen because I'm outside, avoiding the other children. By the time the foster family comes outside, the dog is wagging his tail and licking my face. He's still covered in blood, and I can see a tire track across his fixed ribs.

Mother and Father don't yell, but their whispers in the kitchen are almost worse. The other three children look at me smugly, but they are too scared to pull my hair any more.

The next day, I get put with another foster family: just a man and a woman with a desperate, sad look in their eyes. I don't fix anyone else for a long, long time. I can't help that I fix myself without meaning to. It just happens. I hide it better, now.

I learn about toothbrushes, and braiding hair, and how clothes get washed every day. I learn how to eat more slowly, and chew with my mouth closed, and how to make toast in the toaster. The toaster always shocks me when it spits the bread out, crispy and golden.

The man and the woman get less sad over time. When they tuck me into a soft, warm bed (that is mine, I don't have to share), they say the same four words, "I love you, Moira."

After a while, I figure out what 'love' means, and after even longer, I start to love them back.

When I go to school on a big yellow bus with other loud children, I learn numbers and words. I like words very much. Slowly, I start to speak more, make better words.

Months pass. I only heal myself a couple of times: a paper cut, a twisted ankle.

A year passes. I make some friends, get a bike for Christmas. I fall off the bike and break my arm, but no one sees it and the break is gone in a minute.

The couple finally have their own child, and one day, I get moved to another foster family. For the first time, I cry when I have to leave. I do it at night, into a pillow, and it hurts in a way I can't heal, no matter how hard I try.

I guess they didn't have enough love for both me and the new baby.

More years pass, more families let me go for different reasons. Somehow, I stay in the same school. I get taller, less skinny, smarter and smarter with every book I read. My favorite class is Health, where we learn about the skeleton's bones and muscle groups and which organ does what. When I learn that there are jobs for people who like fixing people, a quiet, trembling candle of hope and want springs up in my heart.

The best ones are called doctors. They get helped by nurses. People like the man and woman in black pants I met in the alley that day are called paramedics.

I'm quiet unless spoken to, always with my head in a book. Sometimes those books are medical textbooks I find for nickels at yard sales, and pay for with coins I find in the gutter. I touch the illustrations of pink muscles, and yellow, purple, or green organs, and white bones with wonder.

Something clicks inside my head. The next time I get hurt, it's by a snag of barbed wire that rips my arm open pretty deep. This time, when I close my eyes, I can see the illustrations of the books brought to life, etched behind my eyelids like doodles in the margins of my friends' notebooks.

I get a job at the library. I meet a boy there, who's staying with his uncle for the school year. It's the happiest I've ever been.

Then the boy moves away. My foster family kicks me out like trash the day I turn eighteen. School ends. My dream fades to nothing because college is so completely out of my reach.

Within a week, I'm eating out of dumpsters again, washing up for work in Burger King bathrooms. I manage to keep my job, and find another bussing diner tables, but I can't make enough money to afford a place to stay.

When the librarian finds me sleeping between the stacks, she fires me.

When the diner owner finds me pawing through the leftovers on people's plates, he fires me, too.

I can't find another job. Weeks turn into months. Summer comes and goes. Autumn does the same.

I've seen other homeless people holding out paper cups to beg for money, and start to do it myself out of desperation.

Winter is chilling me down to the bone, and the cold brick wall I'm huddled against doesn't help. There's snow starting, soon to increase. Nobody has walked by me all day, and I hold my paper cup with fingers I can no longer feel.

I smell the woman before I look up: like a rainstorm after lightening, fresh and clean and powerful. She's not got on a coat, or anything resembling cold weather wear. She's got coffee skin and pure white hair that swallows the snow. "Here," she says gently and without judgment. She drops a twenty dollar bill into my cup, her eyes seeking mine under my filthy hoodie.

"Thank you, God bless you," I croak, as I've heard other homeless say. One of my foster families taught me about God. I wonder frequently if He hears me pray.

Our fingers brush as she gives me the money, and a bruise across her knuckles disappears like a stain under a damp cloth. In a blink, I can see the etch of her bones behind my eyelids, the three bruised ribs that my body heals in a second.

She stiffens, looking from her clean, healed hand to mine and back again. Her other hand goes to her fixed ribs in disbelief that is written all over her face.

I'm frozen with terror. What if she calls the police? What if she screams?

Instead, she crouches down in front of me with a full, honest laugh of delight. It's so real that it dissipates my fear, but I'm still basically suspicious. "Tell me, dear," she says, eyes sparkling. "What is your name?"

"Moira," I reply shortly. I quickly palm the bill, in case she changes her mind. I don't know how she's processed my freakishness so fast, but the change in how I'm usually treated for it disconcerts me.

"Moira," repeats the pretty woman with a smile. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Ororo."

"Stranger name than mine," I snort, getting to my feet to walk off.

Ororo rises gracefully, paces beside me as I try to distance myself. "Wait, please," she says. Something polite but authoritative resounds in her tone, and I find myself stopping. "You and I have something in common," she continues. "Can I show you my secret, as you've shown me yours?"

I stare at her. She doesn't look like a pervert: most of them are men. Something in common? The only thing I've had in common with anybody in my life is the number of limbs on our bodies. Ororo's proposition brings something sharp and desperate out of my shadow-clad soul: a need to identify with someone. "Okay," I reply evenly.

Ororo's eyes start to glow. She raises a hand, and the cold, whipping wind that has battered the street for hours calms to absolutely nothing. The snow ceases to fall like a switch was thrown in the heavens.

Wonder parts my lips as I stare up at the sky, awe compounding as I watch the clouds vanish above us at a wave of her hand.

"You're a mutant, like me," Ororo says, the glow fading and her hand dropping. 'Mutant' resounds in my chest like a gong, rings in my head like Notre Dame's bells. It finally makes sense, now; my incapacity to fit in with people. 'Like me' is a phrase I've never heard applied to me, and she does it with such warmth, not realizing the flay it affects on my heart.

"You were born special," she continues. She must be seeing the turmoil across my face, because she has an infinite gentleness that only snowballs the effect of her words. "I run a school for gifted youngsters like you."

I shamelessly perk up at the mention of the word 'school', before I can stop myself.

Ororo sees my interest before I can lock it down. "Won't you at least come in from the cold? Get a decent meal?"

I wish I could summon an argument, or the willpower to walk away. But my utterly empty stomach and the freeze biting my fingertips make the decision for me. I nod. As I wander after her, towards a Rolls Royce parked around the corner, I can't help but feel like this was meant to be. Somehow, this is a step in the right direction. I can feel it, all the way down to my regenerative bones.

"What do you teach at this... school?" I ask cautiously as she twists a key and dials the internal heat of the car up.

"Most everything," she replies. "To all ages of mutants, we are a haven of safety and learning. There's no need to hide what we are at the Institute."

I mull over this before asking, in a lower voice, "Do you teach medicine?"

Ororo glances at me as we pull away from the curb, a smile playing at her lips. "Yes."


	2. Xavier's Institute

A warm night's sleep does wonders, what little I can get of it. I am drawn heartlessly between death-deep slumber and cruel fits of tossing. I barely remember peeling the filthy street clothes off and stepping under raging hot spray during one of these fits, but I must have been to tired to redress after, because I wake up naked under the sheets.

It occurs to me that I could get used to this. But that might not be an option.

When I start to hear people moving around in the hall, I wrap the sheet around me like a toga and peek out of my room. The backs of two- and three-grouped girls are disappearing down the hall, tossing their blonde, flawless brunette, or in one case violent purple hair. One of them has a bun that reveals the beginnings of snake scales on her nape. Another has backwards knees and an honest-to-God tail.

A bubble of hysteria rises in me as I wonder what my Etch-A-Sketch vision of her bones might look like.

I don't know what to do. Should I follow them towards the wonderful smell of breakfast food? I'm not a student like them. At least, not yet. And what I can remember of this place is that it's huge. How will I find Ororo?

Anxiety makes me bite my lip. This is worse than highschool. Why did I agree to come here...?

Moira? comes a soft female voice in my head.

I literally jump a foot in the air. "What the hell?!" I yelp, withdrawing back into my room.

Don't be afraid, continues the voice. My name is Jean Grey. I'm a professor here. 

Getting my hyperventilating under control, I examine the mental presence. It feels like it hovers between skull and skin, not intruding more than necessary. Reluctantly, I trust the woman enough to mutter, "Do I just... talk aloud, or...?"

That will be fine, replies Grey warmly. Ororo informed me of you arrival late last night. Have you settled into your new room?

I take my first real look at my - my? - room. It's mostly blank and bare, with only hints of the students who have occupied it over the course of its life: small notches in the headboard, the kinds of minor dents in the wall from sports equipment, a skillfully replastered and fist-sized hole next to the window. There is the bed I slept in, a bureau, and a tiny private bathroom with a narrow shower, toilet, and sink. In all, about 15x15 feet, which is way more than any other room I've called my own.

"Not to be rude," I begin hesitantly. "But it's hardly my room. I'm not a student."

The mental equivalent of a frown impresses upon my mind. Ororo said you wanted to pursue the medical field at Xavier's. Isn't that true?

I swallow. That woman, who was freezing, starved, bamboozled by the revelation of a whole new world, and floored by the discovery of a race of mutants to whom she belongs might have been talking out of her head. Survival and desperation make people do and say crazy things.

My fingers curl into unsure fists. Do I want to nurture this tiny flame of hope, at the expense of perhaps being disappointed for the millionth time in my life? Or do I want to cut my losses now, before I get crushed again?

I remember the paramedic woman that fateful day in the alley, and how sure her hands were when she tended me, and how in the midst of my uncertainty and fear she understood feral me. I remember my first yardsale medical tome, and the feeling of wonder when I read and reread the long words I didn't know, and how I slowly came to know their meanings, and how amazing it felt. I remember laying hands on the little boy at my first foster home, and the solidification of a sense of completeness in my chest at fixing him...

The candle of hope has been abused and mistreated, but here, it might be brought back to life. I have a better chance of winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning, and being shark bit all in one day than this opportunity to pursue my calling: the calling I feel in my very soul.

"Yes, that's true," I say, the wary tone of the former idea in my voice. I fiddle with my fingers, shoving down my nerves. "But I'd like some more information, before I make a decision, Professor Grey."

I don't know how Grey manages to convey expressions without a face, but somehow, she indicates an understanding smile. Of course. But before you make any life-changing decisions, how about doing it on a good meal?

As if on cue, my stomach starts to sing like a dying whale. "That... would be nice."

I've sent a young lady with some clothes that should fit. Open the door. 

A rapping sound on the door makes me jump, again.

I'll meet you at breakfast, Moira. Goodbye. 

I think Grey added the valediction more for my benefit, having never been spoken to telepathically. It's polite, but unneeded: I can feel her mental presence withdraw like a damp cloth from my skin, leaving me standing in my sheet-toga bemusedly.

Shaking my head, I remember there is someone at the door. "Coming!" I shout.

When I open the door, I immediately have to crane my head back. Holy DNA, Batman! The young lady Grey sent to me looks like someone s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d every joint in her body, giving her the effect of a giraffe. She is wearing a pair of capris that act more like shorts, a tunic that acts like a t-shirt, and sandals.

She doesn't speak, but she offers me a neatly folded bundle of clothes, her brown eyes flashing shyly to mine. Her face isn't horse-long, like I was expecting. She is surprisingly pretty, with long black hair and almond eyes.

Overcoming my surprise at the existence of Amazonians, I take the clothes and murmur, "Thanks." I almost close the door on her awkward quiet, but think better of it. "You wanna... come in?"

She beams at me, ducking the doorframe and settling on my bed in two long strides.

"Do you... " I almost ask her if she speaks, but if she hasn't yet, then I doubt she does. Or maybe she needs to warm up, first. "I'm Moira Kerr."

Amazon extends her hand, and I shift the clothes to shake it. There are no injuries on her person for me to get sucked into. She points at the window when she lets go, and the beams of light coming from the slatted blinds bend to her direction, flowing like ribbons to hover before us. They spell out in artful cursive: Nice to meet you! I'm Arilee.

"Arilee, huh?" I smile, definitely amazed. "Pretty name." She beams again, and glances with silent mirth at my singing stomach. "Yeah, we need to do something about that," I comment. "So, uh, make yourself at home. Just lemme change."

Arilee thumbs up as the light letters fade, and I adjourn to the bathroom to pull on the clothes. They're surprisingly nice clothes: definitely a step above the derelict Walmart dumpster look I was sporting. A pair of good jeans with a belt for my too-narrow waist, a gray American Eagle t-shirt, and new socks. New socks! I can't remember the last time I had those!

The crowning glory is a hairbrush, though. I rip it through my hair with relish, then ponytail it back lazily. "Ready?" I ask Arilee.

The tall woman gives a thumbs-up, rises with grace, and walks down the hall with me. The measured pace of her steps makes me think she walks with people often.

"So, um, how long have you been at... the Institute?" I fumble, trying to make conversation.

We pass through an atrium of sorts with a soaring glass dome ceiling, and Arilee gathers more light with a flick of her wrist to paint in midair, Almost two years now. I'm studying engineering, with a focus on laser technology.

I chuckle. "That makes a lot of sense." I curiously reach my hand towards the light letters, and Arilee flinches to stop me, but it's too late. With a hiss, my fingers jerk back, reddened like they've been nuked by the sun. "Ow," I mutter, blowing on them. Arilee watches in fascination tempered with apology as my skin irons out to flawlessness again before our eyes. "That's my thing, in a nutshell," I say, mildly embarrassed by my own idiocy. "Not as cool as your power, though."

Way cooler! The light rearranges itself to say. You're like Professor Logan!

We continue to walk. "Who?" I ask.

Professor Logan is on the X-men team, Arilee explains with excited motions of her fingers. He's kinda scary. His nickname is Wolverine. He can heal like you, and he's got these wicked metal claws that pop out of his hands - 

"Can he heal others?" I ask with a one-upping chuckle.

No. It takes me a moment to figure out Arilee isn't beside me anymore. She's stopped in the hallway dumbly, finger hovering senselessly. You can heal others, too?

I find myself fidgeting, trying to figure out the holdup. "Is it that weird?" I ask.

Arilee takes two long strides and she's next to me again. It's not weird, it's just... special. It's a good power to have. More useful than mine.

"All I can do is take hits, I can't give 'em," I rejoin, the ingrained knowledge speaking of many a dark alley throwdown that left me foodless. "When all it takes is a bare knuckle, my fists don't really do their job, you know?" I shrug at her piercing, pitying look. "Besides, you can laser stuff. Isn't that useful for this X-men thing you mentioned? By the way, what is that, like, a sports team or something?"

Arilee puts a hand on her stomach and shakes with soundless laughter. Not sports. Think secret, world-saving, and justice-dealing team of mutants. The gangly woman pauses at a hallway junction, considering. If you can stomach a detour, she writes, tongue in cheek. I'll show you what I mean.

She had me at 'mutants'. I'm burning to know more about this race I suddenly belong to (though 'belong' was still arguable, as of yet). "Sure. So long as it's the Reader's Digest version. I think my stomach just latched onto my spine."

I follow her down the hall. It's quieter here, muted with the same air as a museum. Portraits line the wall, interspersed with the occasional plaque bearing names of graduates. This is kind of our history hall, Arilee explains, taking a ball of light with her into the windowless corridor like a tiny sun. I get the impression she doesn't need it, but it makes speaking more convenient for her. When we give students and parents the tour, they get swung through here to learn about the previous classes, the history of the Xavier Estate, etc. 

I lose awareness of her presence as I study each photo, each plaque.

The Xavier Estate, circa 1700's, begins the sequence as little more than a shanty. There's a series of photos of the Neoclassic mansion we're in, and that I glimpsed the moonlit outline of when Ororo brought me in last night. The latest one looks like it's current. The first few true mansions look almost identical, but the latter couple are radically changed to accommodate more people, who are pictured further down the hall.

There's one of a group of kids: one blue-furred and burly, two young men in a bro-side-hug, a slender blue-scaled woman with yellow eyes and slick hair, and a woman with dragonfly-like wings, and a handful of other mostly nondescript boys. FIRST CLASS reads the caption of the photo, and judging from the pixilation, it's one of the oldest in the hall.

Another one is of a teenage boy surfing an ice halfpipe that seemingly is generated from his hands. He looks free, grinning, caught in a moment of wildness.

Another is of a redheaded woman in a wedding dress, looking adoringly into the red lenses covering her groom's eyes. The one below it was taken seconds later, when they have their ceremonious first kiss and he dips her dramatically, her arms wrapping around his neck.

Another is a simple, stark black-and-white of a man sitting in a lighted Gothic-shaped window. He's wearing a leather jacket, his hair is mussed, and the smoke rising from the cigar balanced on the knee of the leg on the sill disappears in the light. He doesn't to notice the photographer, seemingly caught up in thoughts that make the partial view of his face a study in solemnity, staring out the window.

A seriously ripped man covered in metal skin roaring in mid-hurl of a small car brings a tick to my brow. In the background, there is a woman with white temple streaks to her hair, with one bare hand on his metallic shoulder and the other catching a katana with a fierce expression. The hand wrapped around the blade is the same impervious material as the man she apparently borrowed it from.

A spooky-looking woman in a hijab stares straight into the camera and disintegrates into sand like a wrathful desert goddess.

There are many more of various mutant students demonstrating their powers in some sort of training room, at target practice, during basketball games, or simply sitting in classrooms. I match the names of most with those on the plaques, denoting their graduate status.

"A lot of students have passed through this school," I marvel. It becomes clear to me with each smiling, still face there is much more to this Institute than simple academia: these kids look like they're 100% pleased to be there, happy. They look like they're home. 

"This school is home to a lot of students," comes a voice from the end of the hall.

Arilee turns with smile. Professor Xavier, hello!

"Good morning, Arilee," replies the bald, suited man in the wheelchair congenially.

"Did you just read my mind?" I ask, voice rising an octave. Just how many damn telepaths live here?! Do I need a tinfoil hat?!

"No, no," he chuckles, wheeling closer with a touch of the joystick under his hand. "Barring threat of danger, I rarely do such without permission."

I relax marginally, but his admission to being a telepath makes me wary. "Well, good," I mutter. When I realize I'm letting paranoia override manners, I extend a hand and say, "I'm Moira Kerr. Miss Ororo brought me here."

"Yes," said Xavier, shaking my hand. For all that he was shorter than me in the souped-up wheelchair, he gave off an air of benign power that was simultaneously comforting and disconcerting. "She informed me along with the rest of the staff. I see Arilee has been giving you the tour."

"Uh-huh. We got distracted en route to breakfast. Not that I mind. This place is... informative." I know I'm babbling, and clamp down on it severely.

Xavier's expression is like a gestureless hug. Seriously, this guy is all forms of nice. Is he acting like this because Ororo picked me out of a gutter? I never could take pity from people, even strangers on the street. By pretending that homelessness was simply a speedbump, I maintained an air that got my ass kicked on more than one occasion by other bums putting me in my place. Without conscious thought, I've slipped into that mindset here. Pride bristles in my chest.

"I think we've lingered long enough in the past, for now," Xavier says, his eyes flickering to the FIRST CLASS photo on the wall with an inscrutable microexpression. He turns his chair to lead us out of the hall. Arilee flanks him left, and I right. We are back on track for food, and I am decidedly grateful for it.

To my surprise, Xavier doesn't quiz me on my life story. He doesn't ask me about the clearly degenerate state Ororo found me in, or my powers, or what I want to do next. Mercifully, he simply leads the conversation towards the weather patterns in relation to the day's forecast.

That's when I know I'll be staying.


End file.
